What does it affect? Promotion? Salary?
22 replies (most recent on top)
It means nothing to anyone except the Sponsor, HiPO, and HR. For the rest of us it is useless and manipulative process.
@pt it’s just life, isn’t it? Some of us are born in the US, some in India, China or Indonesia. if your dad’s Bill Gates, you hung out American presidents’ kids, went to school with Fortune 50 CEOs’ kids, and your Ivy League professors wrote recommendations for any job you wanted. If your dad’s a pump attendant in a 2nd tier Chinese city, you took loans for your education and applied for a down-to-earth job. Not saying whose life is more worthy or happy. Corporate America has one definition of success, but all 54K employees at Exxonmobil can each own our own. Once you see past the load of corporate BS (WAEM my ar-e) it’s just a job to pay the bills and put food on the table.
Advice from a HC10 low po who got the layoff recently - if no one looks after you, take care of yourself and invest aggressively. The hipos I knew from yesteryears are stagnating at CL28/ 29 in their 40s, and grieving about the layoff. The layoff came before they remotely reached their potential, which was pipe dream for many anyway.
@pt very simple. You will be as good/bad as DW if you’re put into his position. Promoting whomever they like is the simplest solution, and the outcomes will be no different. It’s just like our society, do you really believe the billionaires are different from you and me?
@h1 How can one succeed here if the rules of the game are skewed towards the select 10% of HiPos. Or is success in EM defined by having a steady paycheck and be thankful. Dont ask for more. Genuinely asking, not meant to be critical.
After the 3rd year I believe.
So, is your potential determined the day you start working? The first week? Month? Year? Determined by WHOM?
@b6 How sad and yet how true! Is this the definition of a merit-based system?
Opportunities.
ExxonMobil is not unique in this, it’s a concept adopted by many MNCs since at least the 1980s.
In ExxonMobil new hires are tagged a potential it is expressed as a CL number. It means the ultimate CL you are expected to reach at the end of your career (at retirement). Experienced hires in general have a lower potential than fresh graduates; support functions in general have a lower potential than engineers. There are exceptions, like Durwood’s an experienced hire. And we now have many more external hires. But, in general.
Someone of CL 22, with potential of 27 may, in their first year of work, be paid the same salary as another CL 22 with potential 36. But the one with exec potential (36) will be placed in highly visible roles, be given lead opportunities in special projects run by other experienced hi-pos (high potential), assigned a sponsor who’s an executive and connect them to other execs, put in a planning role and work closely with VPs, etc. This person’s career will be looked after, discussed, stewarded by their sponsor, mentors and supervisors. When it comes time to write PDS their PDS writes itself. In their first few years, due to the opportunities bestowed on them, they are always ranked OWD or O or E, and very early on are rewarded with RSUs.
On the other hand, the one with low potential will be tasked from Day 1 to do support work, reconcile numbers, assigned frustrating tasks coordinating with low level Indian support, responsible to iron out issues that no high level people care about, like payables not paying vendor after the process moved to MSP. The low pos keep the lights on, participate in grunt projects, and are every so often sold the same corporate BS like WAEM. And because they don’t know what it’s like to be a hipo that gets lots of career support, they think this is how life in EM is. When it’s time to write PDS, they struggle to quantify the work they do, are told they need to be more visible, the rank group is competitive BS, hence they are ranked Good despite working long hours and as hard as the hipos.
In 3-5 years, the hipo becomes the boss of the low-po, moved out of the team, get an expat assignment. There is a gap of at least 2 CLs between them, and the hipo pay is double that of the low-po.
A manager once casually mentioned in a WIN sharing, the company believes in giving 90% of the opportunities to 10% of the good ones who are OWD. If you aren’t hipo, it’s almost impossible to be ranked OWD consistently in your first 5 years. Fight for 10% scraps with the other 90%.
Could your potential get adjusted? Possible, but not often. And the older you get, the more insignificant the adjustments of potential are.
Of course when the hipos go higher up the food chain, the competition gets stiffer. They now compete with higher-pos, fall out of the top, and stagnate in their careers. But they’ve already done better than most of the people their cohort.
Potential is the short cut given to those few they want to promote. Not based on either competence or performance. Just basednon who they like. And once you have it, you ride the benefits for several decades until you get found out. Such is the meritocratic environment.
Potential PIP next se⁷ason. Very common keyboard.
Must be anew hire in btc
@OP your potential and a snake belly have something in common
It really doesn't matter as it can be changed at any time for any reason.
It means diddly in HC10 now.
Potential to be laid off
From the moment you start, you inherit a label that the system rarely revisits. Paradoxically, this early identification can become either your lifelong safety net or your ceiling.
Subsequent strong results barely shift perceptions, and early stars are rarely downgraded.
It’s a systemic bias that reinforces itself: once influential leaders see you as exceptional, they continue to do so by prioritizing roles, assignments (or curating roles for you to not fail) for you until they’re eventually proven otherwise.
It's the single most important KPI to a successful career at XOM.
Just troll fishing for info or just a d-mb fish in the ocean. Nothing to see here.
@op don’t worry you don’t have it
Some ghoul decided you were either a human, or a ghoul like them
@OP it’s something you won’t need to worry about. You might want to learn what PIP means
Seriously dude!!!
Do you really work for ExxonMobil???